


Staccato

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [13]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Accord is tactless, Alt Power, Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coil is creepy, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Supervillains, Taylor triggered when her mother died, Taylor works for Accord, Trickster's a dick, all things are right in the world, but that's not unusual, lisa is a little shit, with maybe the exception of Noelle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 05:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20003269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: After working for Accord for the last three years, Taylor - sometimes known as Tactus - is sent back to Brockton to watch over the Travelers.





	Staccato

There’d been more than a few things to say about working for Accord. Plenty of those were good, certainly; his patterns were always unerringly perfect and his presence never too grating, but there were also bad parts. Taylor had been working with him for a little over three years at this point, and in a way he’d shaped more of her adolescence as than her father and mother ever had. A desperate, tiny little part of her needed perfection, _needed_ to be perfect for Accord. He was never a father figure, _would never be one_ —their relationship was nothing so informal—but at the same time she couldn’t quite say it was the relationship of a boss and a subordinate.

Taylor clenched her teeth behind her mask, doing her level best to pretend her headache wasn’t making it difficult to stare at Coil. She didn’t want to be here, in Brockton Bay or otherwise, but Accord had worries about the Travelers and while he couldn’t quite give up Citrine for any length of time, he could spare her. She was not here as Coil’s subordinate - or even as one of Accord’s Ambassadors - in the truest sense. She was here to _watch_ , to report back to Accord where the Travelers were no longer allowed to. When either everything went wrong - which it would - or Accord decided everything was perfect enough - which he never would - she’d be allowed to return, to take back her place beside him, but no sooner.

Currently, Trickster was babbling and verbally licking Coil’s boot, but she didn’t let her focus slip over to him, instead drawing herself further back into her head. Accord had needed to break pattern, had to break _her_ pattern, and had to do it without her consent or awareness. Taking longer, informing Taylor of the end result, would’ve made the headache last longer when the pattern finally broke, as it was ultimately a decision outside of her control. Instead, he had sent her in - _the first impression of a migraine flickering across her vision, Citrine’s mouth cutting a straight though unhappy line through her face_ \- and informed her she would be leaving with the Travelers. Blessedly, he had said nothing nor had he punished her when she’d flinched, Accord’s pattern snapping like so much dry tinder wood.

Accord, in one of the few genuinely _nice_ gestures he’d made towards her in her tenure with him, had decided on the quick and painful route contrary to the lengthy, less painful one. Taylor appreciated it, and knew that the migraine would recede in under a day – she’d even likely wake up tomorrow and the pain would be mostly gone. It still didn’t help her in the moment, however, as her power desperately tried to reach out and latch onto patterns and rhythms even while she did her best to deny it.

Coil, in whatever capacity he might exist, was the equivalent of broken glass. There was a pattern in the _constant_ breaking of patterns, in the slight half-second hitches that Taylor started to acknowledge as its own separate entity. He’d been difficult to let her power grasp hold of at the start, like rubbing alcohol on an already salted wound, but once the initial hurdle was over and it became clear his breaks were, themselves, _a pattern_? He wasn’t as perfect as Accord, never would be, but his patterns were more regimented, more _natural_ , than anyone she’d ever met before. The next closest thing were people who were particularly old, where internal and external patterns were all they were, now that age had rot all else away.

 _Three. Two. One_. “Tactus, it is a _pleasure_ to see you. Accord has said so much about you—” a slight, almost imperceptible pause; she noticed “—in our correspondence. I’m to understand you’re here to watch over the Travelers?”

Taylor slipped her gaze towards Trickster, a slight throb reverberating through her head as her power brushed against the discordant, cloying patterns that played through his and the rest of his team’s heads. At least Noelle wasn’t here – whatever she _was_ , and she was still uncertain that it would be ‘human’, her power never agreed with it.

“I am,” Taylor was slow, steady with her voice; a habit from her time with Accord, one that obviously made Trickster clench in annoyance. He didn’t like her, but the feeling was mutual. “I’m to remain here until further notice. I was informed, until my funds came through, that I would remain with one of your own, am I mistaken?”

She was reeling her power in as best she could, so her awareness of the patterns that made up Coil, broken as they were, was only that: an awareness. Taylor refused to let herself slip too deeply into it, at risk of worsening her headache. She did wonder what she might find if she let her power go, if she slid a metaphysical finger into the currents, hooked and primed to drag things out, but the urge to do so was just that: an urge.

You learned to cope with _urges_ when working for Accord.

“Ah, yes.” No break in Coil’s cadence, but Taylor could feel it coming, as the break itself was another pattern. The pause again, almost impossibly small, but a break in the natural rhythm and cadence of a _person_ , of what people’s brains were even capable of. On a better day, in a better mood, she might even be fascinated by it.

Coil dialed a few numbers into a numpad just above where his right hand had been resting, a corresponding series of three _click-click-click_ s following. “She’ll be down in just one moment.”

Taylor laced her fingers together beneath the black venetian cloak she wore, tightening her grip down and around each digit to the point of pain. “I imagine you understand what they need and what Noelle will need?” she pretended not to hear the sharp mutter from Trickster, informing her she had no right to say her name. “I didn’t come with any information you shouldn’t already have, but I can brief you on the necessities.”

That got her a dismissive wave from Coil, who then brought his hands back together, knotting them primly in front of him. “I have already spoken at length with Accord about what will be necessary for getting Noelle help. I believe we’ll see this through, and see Noelle returned to a normal state of being, in a reasonable amount of time.”

It didn’t take a Thinker to see the lie. Trickster didn’t notice, too consumed by a habitual need to help Noelle, and the others simply either didn’t care enough to be paying attention or didn’t care enough to comment. Taylor was pretty sure there was nothing that would work on their late friend, not really.

Finally, in the absence of noise, a door clicked open. A blonde girl wearing a full purple catsuit, a domino mask, and what looked to be a too-smug smile paced in after a slightly disquieting, sweater-wearing man. She quickly outpaced him, both of her hands coming to fold behind her as she paced past Coil’s desk, away from the Travelers and towards her.

Taylor contained a sigh, letting her power lapse from Coil and to the approaching teenager. There wasn’t much there - yet - but even the tempo of her walk was enough to start informing her of other patterns, though what they said she wasn’t terribly interested in.

“I’m Tattletale.” A hand was offered as she neared, Taylor stared at it for a moment before taking it. “I’ll be your chaperone until you have your own place.”

Coil, apparently appeased, turned back to the sweater wearing man and the remainder of the Travelers, speaking in a flat voice that was hard to remain focused on. Turning her attention fully onto Tattletale, Taylor let herself _really_ take the girl in, noticing the green eyes, the half-hidden freckles, the tightness in her expression that spoke more about the situation than the tight grip of their handshake. A pattern was already forming, behaviors and habits she threaded together into a coherent cycle – enough that she could already begin to pick out where her powers bounced against Tattletale’s, the pattern hitching - but not breaking - in places where it shouldn’t, readjusting with every change to Tattletale’s awareness of her.

“Huh,” the other girl’s voice was helplessly blasé. “Well, _aaaanyway_. Let’s get out of here?”

Taylor shrugged, unwilling to rock the boat on that end. Tattletale relinquished her hand, spun on heel, and made to quite literally strut her way out. She followed after, her boots squeaking against the polished linoleum. She spared Coil one last lapsing glance, one she knew he caught even if he wasn’t looking at her, before the door slid shut, leaving her and her chaperone in an empty, somewhat chilly concrete hallway.

The path was straight ahead, and Tattletale looked more than a little eager to get out of here, so she was off like a bullet, almost at running speed. Taylor, comparatively, kept to her walking pace, unbothered by the other girl’s eagerness to leave the bunker in part because she needed time to adjust and also in part because she was sort of in a foul mood and wasn’t really going to play along, not if she couldn’t help it.

When Taylor finally did reach the end of the hallway, she found Tattletale leaning against a wall, an opened elevator just to her left. “So, returning home, eh?” the words made her hitch, she wondered if Accord had shared her civilian identity with Coil. She hoped not. “Or at least feeling nostalgic, if a bit irritated? Huh. I can understand that."

To make a point, Taylor shouldered her way past Tattletale to get into the elevator. The other girl snorted airily, a bizarrely _dainty_ sound for so crude a gesture. “Look, Tactus?” the elevator pitched up, though the ascent was surprisingly smooth otherwise. “I get that this isn’t your greatest day, but I think we can do _great_ things together, given the circumstances.”

Only when the doors shuttered open, revealing an underground parking lot occupied by a fleet of vans, did Taylor bother to speak up. “I wonder?” well, she _didn’t_ wonder, truth be told. “We can plot later though, can’t we? You should know, I’m currently nursing a headache.”

“As well as a bad temper and you’re on your—” a frank and stiff look made the other girl’s words splutter to a stop. Instead, Tattletale shrugged and let out a half-mumbled “was just saying that I understood what you’re going through”.

Following Tattletale’s footsteps, Taylor cycled through the fleet of SUVs, armored vehicles and the occasional smart car, eventually coming to a halt near a black painted Honda of some sort or another. It wasn’t exactly an impressive car, but that was probably the point – it looked practically _civilian_ among the rest of the lineup. The car bleeped as Tattletale used what looked to be a remote, her hand coming down to quickly pull the door open, one hand doing a lazy circle – a gesture for her to do the same.

Taylor settled into the passenger’s seat with a huff, reaching up to quickly buckle herself in. Tattletale, meanwhile, was unsubtly removing her mask for _some reason_. She stared vacantly at the now unmasked villainess, trying very hard not to yell at her.

“What?” Tattletale’s voice was pointed. She’d tugged down the front mirror and looked to be quickly removing some makeup, revealing an even more thorough dusting of freckles. “Look, while I get that you don’t have much outside of your life as Tactus, some of us don’t like being pulled over for being a known villainess in a car. I won’t ask you to take off your mask, just try to hide if you don’t?”

Taylor paused at the request. “Are you sure this is private enough?”

“Does it matter?” was the flat, somewhat recalcitrant response.

 _To be fair? Not really_. Taylor plucked at her mask, unclasping it at the back before letting it fall from her face and into her lap. She reached forward to wipe some of the sweat from her forehead, wincing as her eyes had to readjust to the light without being behind those tinted lenses.

“Call me Lisa,” the car had, in the interim, been started and pulled away from their parking spot. They were moving pretty slow, but at least there was actual light at the end of the tunnel.

“Taylor,” she was pretty sure her tone wasn’t sociable enough to pretend that she was enjoying any of this.

As they approached the large, half-opened gate, Lisa reached forward and rolled her thumb across a few of the dials. The first thing was a sudden kick, the vents coming on as chilled air puttered out, and the second thing was that the radio turned on and then was both immediately shifted to a channel that played some sort of classical arrangement. The volume was adjusted accordingly shortly thereafter.

Taylor sagged, both unwilling and unable to pretend that she wasn’t relieved now that she could push her power at something _other_ than people, at something with an inherent pattern and tempo that was so _goddamn_ soothing. “You noticed?”

Lisa, from the corner of her eye, seemed to shrug absently. “I did. I know what it’s like, too, I’m not nursing a headache right now but, well, we all have our ways to cope with our problems.”

The first rays of the day spilled through the opening and into their window, a bright dawn cut over a skyline Taylor remembered faintly. Something close to nostalgia, maybe even melancholy, came to her as she stared at Brockton Bay, trying desperately to put herself back together. She’d left this place by listening to her power, and now she was back at this place against the will of her power, the decision to do so still lingering as a noisy headache in the back of her head.

Taylor's throat tightened at the memory, but Lisa was either too busy avoiding looking suspicious while in the early morning traffic or was giving her time to herself to mope, decidedly not even bothering to look at her or comment.

She had left her father at the urging of her power. Patterns, Taylor understood those, that was her power in isolation, an understanding of patterns on a micro-to-macro scale, working both generally to identify them and more directly to pick them apart and offer information about what might happen as the pattern continues. It wasn’t exactly precognitive, not really, more incredibly accurate guessing, but it’d been more than a little overwhelming at the start. She’d had her power for less than a few days and all it told her was that her father wouldn’t recover, that he’d become a man so consumed by the memory of her mother that she’d be forgotten.

She'd listened to her power and it told her to leave, that her father was unfixable. Taylor had fallen into a few smaller gangs for a few months, working her way away from the Bay, to a place where the patterns weren’t so reminiscent, but she’d been thirteen at the time and people were big and strong and scary. Accord found her, then, and gave her a place alongside the rest of the Ambassadors, but especially Citrine. Citrine, for as much as she might complain about her, was a woman who understood what it was like to be Accord and to be _Tactus_ , and she’d been instrumental in keeping her, in one capacity or another, _sane_.

She owed a lot to the Ambassadors, but she also didn’t. This wasn’t even a test, Taylor had dealt with plenty of those, tests about her willingness to be perfect, about her loyalty, but this? This was a chance, an offer. Accord wouldn’t hate her for doing as she wanted while here, that was part of it. It was why he was sending her here under the premise that she’d be here until he was either satisfied - and he would never be, he knew that as much as she did - or until something went so wrong that he felt the need to intervene - which would mean Noelle getting loose, which was also incredibly unlikely.

He’d loosened her proverbial leash, something he’d kept rather tight until recently.

 _Still, he is forcing me to go to school anyway, so I’m not sure why I’m bothering_. He’d expected her to go to school in Boston, and she had, she’d even been used as a plant to keep tabs on Wards like Weld and others who were a bit too unsubtle about things, but this? This was a bit much. Taylor hadn’t even been sent to Arcadia, the assumed Ward destination, but rather _Winslow_ , and she was starting in just a week, leaving her little time to begin to cope with the changes.

Glancing up from her hands, Taylor watched as Lisa started to pull off to the side, the car sputtering a bit more slowly as it pulled away and towards what she remembered as the clusters of old iron working factories. “A bit remote, isn’t it?” Lisa’s voice was chiding, almost bemused. “Don’t worry, we already have the guest room set up for you.”

The car pulled to a stop at the base of a rusted out husk of a warehouse, something she’d never really expected. The music clicked off, the silence returning and her powers woefully desperate to grasp onto something else, some other pattern she’d likely get a headache over. Climbing out of the car and trying to keep her focus steady, Taylor waited for Lisa to lock the car before pacing after her, managing to focus on Lisa’s walking cycle instead of her breathing or her twitching cycle, two things that needed more information before she could begin to hook herself onto when need be.

Brandishing a key, Lisa thumbed what was now obviously a well-maintained door open. She waved one hand, _incredibly_ overdramatic but expected nonetheless. “Welcome to _Casa de Undersiders_ ,” she crowed, her face split into a wide, cheshire’s grin.

“It’s up the stairs, right?” Yeah, she absolutely wasn’t about to play the guessing game. The only non-rusted thing in the warehouse was the spiral staircase, that much was obvious.

Lisa let out a huff. “You’re no fun.”

“I worked for Accord.” That was, apparently, reason enough, seeing as Lisa deflated just a bit, grumbling as she paced towards the actual entryway into the base.

“Well, anyway. Let’s introduce you to the team!” Lisa was already crawling her way up the stairway with a certain sort of desperation, her voice almost buried beneath the staccato of footsteps and stomps.

Not managing to hide the sigh this time, Taylor followed after.


End file.
